6 ward to the front of the orchestra, and welcomed with the loud, but respectful, homage of the whole assembly. He lived for six years after this, all marked by the same noble resignation and courage; still earnest in his passion for music, and still conducting his oratorios, up to the very date of his death, April 13, Good Friday, 1759; on the 6th of which month he had himself conducted his masterpiece, the Messiah,' at Covent Garden. A week later his pupil, Smith, took his place as conductor to the same oratorio at the Foundling Hospital, which the managers calmly announced by inserting in their advertisement the words "in place of the late G. F. Handel, Esq." On the 24th of May, however, it occurred to these gentlemen that a word or two in memorial of Handel would not be out of place, and they accordingly advertised a "Performance of Sacred Music in grateful memory of G. F. Handel, Esq., under the direction of Mr. Christopher Smith. Mr. John Stanley will also perform a Concerto on the Organ. Gentlemen to come without swords, and ladies without hoops." It was at the Foundling that during the following this same oratorio was performed nine times by a full orchestra, with Stanley at the organ; and never, years we may be sure, without a kindly remembrance of his sturdy and faithful old friend the author. Handel was buried on the 24th of April, in Poet's Corner, in the presence of a great concourse of people of all ranks, his funeral sermon being preached in the Abbey by the Bishop of Rochester. In spite of his occasional roughness and coarseness of speech, there can be no doubt that he was at heart a deeply religious man. It is said, on good authority, that he never sat down to work at the 'Messiah' without prayer to Him whose name it bore; and when engaged in the great Hallelujah Chorus, he says in his broken English, "I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself." Some days before his death he expressed a strong wish that he might die on the Good Friday, "that he might be with his dear Lord and Saviour on the day of His resurrection ;" and the consolation was not denied him. CHAPTER XII. NICHOLAS SAUNDERSON, THE BLIND AUNDERSON was born at Thurlston, in York SAUND shire, in the year 1682, and when but a few months old lost not only his sight, but his very eyeballs, by the small-pox; so that no recollection of light, or any seen object, could have availed him in after life. His father was a shrewd, hard-headed, exciseman, of small means which hardly sufficed for the support of a large family. But he did what he could for all of them, and especially for Nicholas, his blind son, who was sent to the Free School at Pennistone, and there managed, in spite of his blindness, to pick up a sound grammatical knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages; as well as some mathematical knowledge, for which, from the very first, he showed great aptitude. Under his father's teaching at home the boy soon learned to master the common rules of arithmetic, and there were few questions which he could not at once solve in his head by dint of a clever memory. Gradually such questions took a higher and wider range; no ordinary difficulties puzzled him, and if a common rule did not satisfy or please him in dealing with a difficult problem, he often invented a new one for himself. In his eighteenth year he had made such progress as to understand with ease the works of Euclid, Diophantus, Archimedes, and Newton, in their original languages; and such books as his father could not procure he was fortunate enough to obtain from friends, who, perceiving that they had to deal with a man of high intellect and genius, did all they could to help him on his way. Among these were a Mr. West, of Underbank, and a Dr. Nettleton, who not only supplied him with all necessary books, but had him instructed in the higher branches of Algebra and Geometry. Thus stimulated and thus helped, genius like Saunderson's soon began to bear fruit, and ere long the scholar had surpassed his teachers. He seemed at times to arrive by a sort of instinct at results to which they could but point a narrow, long, and intricate path; and to solve by intuition problems which others had to deal with by strict rule. For a time, after this, he was sent to a private school at Attercliffe, near Sheffield; but logic and metaphysics-the two chief studies there were not to his taste; and he went back to his own home, resolved to study, after his own fashion, the subjects to which his special taste and genius led him. Books and a good reader were his chief wants, and these his father, the exciseman, did his utmost to supply, and with the help of friends succeeded. After a few years of quiet, diligent, study, during which Saunderson's fame as a mathematician became more and more widely known, he gained the friendship of Joshua Dunn, a fellow-commoner of Christ's College, who generously took him to Cambridge, and obtained permission for him to reside in the College, though he was not admitted as a member of the house. Here he had books in abundance, abundant leisure for quiet study, and teachers well able to assist him if he needed help. It was soon found, however, that the blind man needed no help; on the contrary, that he could teach others, even in the highest range of mathematical science. His next step was to give Lectures on the Newtonian Philosophy, which he did with brilliant success to a large class of students; with the free permission and good-will of Whiston, then Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and the |